Bitcoin network mining difficulty, which measures how hard it is to add new blocks to the Bitcoin ledger, declined by roughly 11.16% over the past 24 hours, representing the steepest single adjustment since China’s 2021 crackdown on crypto mining.

Data from CoinWarz shows mining difficulty currently stands at 125.86 T, taking effect at block 935,429, with the average block time at around 9.47 minutes, slightly faster than the 10-minute target. Projections indicate difficulty could rise again in the next adjustment on Feb. 20 by approximately 5.63% to 132.96 T.

China’s ban on cryptocurrency mining in May 2021 triggered a sequence of sharp downward difficulty adjustments between May and July of that year, ranging from 12.6% to 27.9%, according to historical CoinWarz data. The latest decline occurred during a broader crypto market downturn, which saw Bitcoin fall by more than 50% from its record high above $125,000 to around $60,000, alongside temporary miner outages linked to severe winter weather in the United States.

Severe winter storm disrupts US mining activity

A powerful winter storm swept across the United States in January, affecting 34 states and causing widespread snow, ice and freezing conditions that disrupted electrical infrastructure. The strain on the power grid led many US-based Bitcoin miners to temporarily reduce energy consumption and suspend operations, lowering the total network hashrate, which reflects the computational power securing the Bitcoin network.

Foundry USA, the world’s largest mining pool by hashrate, reportedly lost around 60% of its hashing power during the storm. Its total computational output fell from nearly 400 exahashes per second to about 198 EH/s in response to the weather-related disruptions.

Hashrate recovers, but broader pressures remain

Following the disruption, Foundry USA’s hashrate rebounded to more than 354 EH/s and continues to control roughly 29.47% of total network share, according to Hashrate Index.

Despite this recovery, the overall Bitcoin network hashrate dropped to a four-month low in January as weaker crypto market conditions and a shift by some miners toward AI data centers and high-performance computing placed additional pressure on mining activity.

Sources:

https://www.accuweather.com/en/winter-weather/ice-storm-threatens-texas-to-virginia-with-widespread-power-outages-travel-shutdowns/1855315

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-difficulty-drops-11-worst-2021-china-ban

https://www.coinwarz.com/mining/bitcoin/difficulty-chart

https://hashrateindex.com/hashrate/pools